It finally was cold in February

It finally was cold in February.

I found out that I love the cold.

It slows everyone down. I slow down. It's always dark, so there's no
rush to get anywhere. I wear all kinds of clothes in layers, and it
always feels like bedtime.

It's relaxing, and a little exciting. When it gets this cold, it's
easy to start to feel survivalist, and to identify with the dramas that
take place in cold places.

 

"We're having trouble adapting the speeders to the cold."

 

"Have to go out on the bus then."

I don't ride the bike when it's this cold. I take the bus again.

I see the city's people wearing their tattered piles of clothes and
coats. Some are happy and loud and laughing. Some are angry.

 

In the morning the angry people are quiet but their eyes look out in dull fury.

 

I see the young professionals wearing color coordinated gloves, scarf and hats, toting briefcases, gym bags, and rolling suit cases.

When walking to work, or home from work, or with a group of people coming out of a bar after happy hour, I occasionally pass a giant cocoon on the sidewalk.

Inside the cocoons, wrapped in bags and blankets and
scraps of plastic and cardboard, are people, suspended amongst the city's motion.

 

The people I am with are talking loudly, laughing and smiling, red-faced, looking to hail a cab. Some woman in business attire and long coat passes by on her cell phone. She wears long, slender gloves.

 

The cocoons on the sidewalk don't move, and are quiet.

I think about the homeless people while I'm on the bus. I wonder if
the guy sleeping across from me is homeless. He's wearing a lot of pieced together clothes. There are the remnants of a newspaper exploded around him, under him, on the seat, on the floor.

 

I get up when it's my stop. He keeps sleeping.